Virginity lost : an intimate portrait of first sexual experiences /

This is a great book. It is well researched, grounded in compelling personal stories from 61 diverse young Americans, and accessibly written. Carpenter (Vanderbilt Univ.) begins with a chapter on the shifting and gendered understandings of virginity loss in US history and follows with a reflection on how virginity is variously defined. The core of Carpenter's book focuses on three dominant metaphors that emerged in her interviews: virginity loss as a gift, virginity as a stigma to shed, and virginity loss as one step in the process of growing up. The metaphors that participants adopted shaped their virginity loss experiences, particularly in terms of risk and personal agency. She finds that viewing virginity loss as part of a process is most likely to foster personal well-being and sexual agency. Carpenter also discusses respondents who favor abstinence, and in doing so raises concerns about the current reign of abstinence-only education in the US. Throughout her book, Carpenter nicely grounds her analysis in sociocultural context, considering wider social reasons for shifting attitudes toward virginity loss and adeptly attending to the intersecting identifications of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. R. C. Raby Brock University